good evening. did you know that president john f kennedy was the most photographed leader of his day. this may not surprise you since he used photography strategically to share his values of america. it was also the golden age of photography in america and that's why this subjec is of interest to us at the smithsonian international art museum. we focus on telling the stories of the american experience, from folk art to photography as well as painting and sculptor and crafts and media arts. our exhibition, american visionary john f kennedy's life and times which you can view on

the second floor in the graphic arts gallery is a premier event, among many organized by the kennedy presidential library. i'm the mary and -- director of the smithsonian apaircon art museum and sam is what we call ourselves for short. you're in for a special treat this evening as we've assembled a distinguished group of historians and scholars debating the kennedy administration and its legacy. many of you likely remember it kennedy administration and the arc of history. we also have several members of congress in the room with us and i want to pause for a moment and acknowledge them and thank them along with their staff for their work in doing the people's business. please join me in recognizing congressman jim banks, representing indiana's third

district, congressman representing rhode island's third district and a member of the congressional art caucus and finally congressman representing the fifth district. we've asked them to graciously introduce our moderator this evening who is the edhad of the kennedy library association. in closing i want to note that tonight's program is being live streamed and also recorded by net fet. c-span so kindly turn off your digital devices so we may all enjoy the program tonight. thank you and i appreciate your being with us.

>> thank you, stephanie, for it work that you do. steven, i was told to introduce you. they didn't say graciously introduce you but i will try to do that. dave utd a great leader on the democratic side of the aisle who represents rhode island and former mayor of providence. thank you for all you do. from this time and this place to friend and foe alike that torch has been passed to a new generation of americans tempered by war, disciplined by a hard

and bitter peace. proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. i am -- [ applause ] i am a part of the inspired generation who listened to those words, who listened to john kennedy and whose life was changed. not only by writing about it but by living. the life of our 35th was to renocorporate the gift outright. he was, to my generation and to

many generations, a gift outright. for he gave of himself at every turn, from his bravery during the war to his steadfastness in our nation and world's most dangerous hour during the cuban missile crisis. for those of us that who remember him, it was a time of promise, renewal, progress. for those that do not, it has nonetheless shaped our understanding of what public service means. in my office at the capitol sits a bust of john f kennedy. it was given to me by my mother in 1973. i was then a member of the

maryland state senate. and she knew what an extraordinary impact john kennedy made on my life. it is a reminder not only the values for which he stood but the curage from which he stood for them. and for me personally it's a reminder of what drove me from public service. he spoke as i'm sure he spoke to hundreds of thousands of young people. a lot of young people in this audience and he spoke about what we could do to make difference and further what we ought to do to make a difference. to in short ask not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country. when president kennedy went to amherst college to eulogyize

robert frost reveals a nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but by the men it honors and i'm sure we all would add by it women we honor. so as we honor the centennial, of the birth of let us reveal in our tributes the vision of america that he dispouzed, a positive vision. a hopeful vision. a vision of partnership and mutual responsibility. an america secure in its sense of purpose. an america bolstered by its people. an america constdant in it itself to say to adversaries and i quote let both sides join in a

new endeavor. not a new balance of power. bought new world of law. where the strong are just and the weak secure. and the peace preserved. this evening we engage in our ongoing work of honoring president kennedy and his legacy. the preservation of that legacy. rothsteen serves as executive director which supports the work of the presidential library in boston. when he arrived at the kennedy library foundation in august, he brought with him a wealth of experience successfully leading academic private sector and government institutions. like others inspired by president kennedy's call to give back to their communities and

their country, steven has pursued public service in many different forms. at the start of his career he partnered with president kennedy's nephew joseph p. kennedy ii to found citizens energy corporation. a first ever nonprofit energy company helping low income families afford heating, oil, gas and electricity. steve, why didn't they let you get any ads? as a massachusetts state official, steven over saw programs helping the mentally ill. john kennedy had something to say about disabled children. he said although these children may be the victims of fate, they shall not be the victims of our neglect. steven, thank you for your work with the mentally ill of which patrick kennedy has been such a great leader.

launched a private sector firm for green energy technologies. he served as the president of the perken school for the blind. and the number of students online and in person from 40,000 to nearly a million. he did god's work. thanks in large part to his leadership, the perkins is now the largest trainer of teachers and parents of the blind. between his departure from perkins and last year, steven led citizens schools, help hadding middle schools provide low if hadcome students to learn din mand science, engineering and math skills. and certainly we would call it steam he continues to serve on the indoor director of the brady campaign.

working to promote safer communities and schools. steve no doubt would have been proud that his life is being led by a life spent to service of those in needs and building a better america for all. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming steven rothsteen to the podium. let's hear again to the leadership our country is better off each and every day because of the work you and your colleagues do on the hill. these are challenging times but knowing you're there fighting the fight on big issues and small issues and helping to move us forward lets us sleep at night. so thank you for your service each and every day. we really appreciate it.

again for our distinguished leader again. and stephanie, thank you so much for everything except for having to follow hoyer. i appreciate everything you and all it team have done and if you haven't had had a chance to see the photographs up stairs, take a look. i've had a chance to see them before and they're just a remarkable collection of some fascinating views, public and private views of john kennedy and his family and from an artistic perspective well worth while. when stephanie started off she said there are academics and scholars. there are two that there about to come up and you have to stick with me for just a minute. so we can get toure distinguished guests in a minute. since today in the united states

80% of the people alive today were born after the kennedy administration. 80%. so one of the questions we're going to talk about in a little while is why is the centennial important and why is he still, every year there are surveys done of popular presidents and he's always in the top three, four, five depending on perspectives and why is that? because he was only there for 1,036 days. obviously it was cut short. the other thing to keep in mind is pugh does an annual survey of trust in government and in 1962, when john kennedy was there, he did, as you know the first televised press conferences and less than a three year period he had had 64 press conferences. now i'm not going to compare that to anybody else, i wouldn't

do that. but he did an average every 16 days and the first five pres conferences were collectively watched by 60 million americans. and they got to see someone making decisions and even did one literally right after the bay of pigs. so he didn't just do it when there was good news. he believed in transparency in government, in public service. the most noteworthy perspective. and so when they did their survey in 1962, 75% of the people had trust in government. they didn't agree in everything but they had trust in government. a year ago that 75% had had gone to 19%. so one of the questions for all of us is what do we do about that? so i'm going to introduce our two speakers but first again they have very distinguished

backgrounds but directs the center at the library of congress. director of the john carter brown library. was also the founding director of the star center for the american experience at american university. before that a he was a senior advisor working on many fronts including the planning of the clinton library. he also has been the editor and author of nearry a dozen books and in 2012 worked on carolyn kennedy, listening in the secret white house recordings. he recorded over 200 hours. so he did have a recording system and they're all transparent, they're are available. but ted created a book, a marvelous piece. i encourage you to get that listening in. fred, the second distinguished person i'm going to introduce in

a minute is currently the professor of international affairs at harvard where he hold as joint appointment and if you know harvard, getting one pointment is amazing. to have a joint appointment is nothing less than remarkable and his most recent book "embers of war" the making of america's vietnam will have won a pulitzer prize as well as it frank parkman prize and if you want to learn more, if you havant read embers of war, i encourage you to do that. he's also the it past president of the society of historians for american foreign relation and he's currently writing a biography on john kennedy. i've read a lot but i'm really excited. i can't wait for him to finish his had. so before they come up, there's

a 30 second vidio we've been playing that i think we can watch now and then we'll kick off the program. so -- >> never before has man had had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease too, banish illiteracy and massive human misery. we have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world. >> come on up, come on up. [ applause ] >> so we're here as part of the

centennial activity and we've done with partners like smithsonian and many others over 100 events across the it country and a few internationally. why is celebrating centennial important? >> part of the answer it seems to me is kmem rashz commemorati important, this is my own view, for it civic health of the nation. not only with john f kennedy, but other leaders. i think it helps bind us together and i think in this particular case it's an extraordinary story. president kennedy had a marvelous sense of humor and i suspect if he had lived to be 100, he would make some remark about having over stayed his welcome. but we recognize this extraordinary day 100 years ago that he was born in brook line in 1917.

because of some of the things congressman hoyer said that we saw in the film. i think he inspired us. inspired americans. he reminds americans, it it seems to me of an age when it was possible to believe. this is powerful to me. especially as a recent citizen of this country. reminds americans of an age where it was posable to believe that politics could speak to our highest moral europeanings. could be harnessed it seems to me to our highest aspirations and that's important. that's certainly one of the reasons why we celebrate them sfw. >> i agree with everything fred just said. history is the kind of civic glue. we're living in a difficult political time but we do have one history and anniversaries

giving us a chance to remember this is a little disorienting because rarlts little hard to imagine john f kennedy at 100 had years old. he always looked young, he looks unbelievably -- and there's a kind of presence to john f kennedy that i think is unusual. when congressman hoyer read the lines from the guest sitting behind me said thank you and there is a kind of immediatacy to the words of john f kennedy. they still live with us. >> if we don't learn from history, we are going to repeat some of it. so it is important. >> i think historical

sensibility of kennedy's -- in my research for this book, that dimension. i think i knew something about when i started the work but it's so powerful and it comes out even when he is sickly and i think very early on that historical sensibility was manifest and i think stayed right through to the end. >> we remember him as one of the most natural politicians any of us ever saw. there's a line in the book where he's talking about himself. he said this is really hard. i would rather read a book on the airplane rather than talk to the person sitting beside me. i think that was genuine shyness. he was smaller than his older

brother. his older brother that was supposed to go into politics but i think all wuz a reservation that was even more attractive. like he wasn't giving you everything. which is somehow how the incessant torrid of media information feels to us. we can't escape it, especially on days like yesterday and this week. and there was something very sereeberal about imhad. he said exactly what he wanted you to hear and not more and that was very attractive. >> why do you think, as i alluded to earlier, in the polls he is one of the most popular presidents. if you think about roosevelt and lincoln. why is that, when he had so little time there and clearly, others, johnson got legislation.

>> it's a great question. we can't ever escape the tragic end of the kennedy presidents. that haunts all of us as a nation and i've been thinking today about what i wanted to say i think we should avoid the false trap of thinking everything was utopia and perfect in the early '60s and our politics have disintegrated because obviously we had very serious problems and deep political hatreds in the way his presidency ended stemmed from that. but there was a lot achieved. i mean most of us i think feel, most historians feel the cuban missile crisis was the greatest crisis of the last 60 years and an existential crisis that had it not been -- if he had not led us as ably as he did, there are pretty strong chance the world as we know it would have ended. so that's a special kind of

achievements that over shadows most presidential achievements. but it it was kind of a high noon of american empire, american culture. everyone was doing interesting things. there was a new liberalism coming out and a new conservatism and he represented the hopes and aspirations of a very important generation coming on to the world stage and has not left. so for all those reasons they were if tense days. and he was an intense leader during that time. >> i would add to what ted has said. as we were saying earlier he inspired us. and i don't mean just america. because in my little corner of the world. i'm from sweden and i've often talked with not only my parents but other relatives about and this is before i started this

book project about john f kennedy. and at least part of the answer to your question is that it seems to me that it wasn't just america who took something from what john f kennedy represented and said in his had speeches, it wasn't just the assassination because some of this and i've speaken to people about this, was about what he did as president. so at least -- i suspect -- in other words i'm suggesting if we had a global poll, not just one of americans, he would still figure very highly. it seems to me barack obama brought some of that, not just in the united states but abroad. there are interesting similarities. but that's maybe one thing i would add to it. >> i think very few presidential speeches that we reread. there really aren't any outside of lincoln, franklin roosevelt

and john f kennedy. and it isn't just because he was handsome and young. there is great substance in those speeches. there's great wit, there's great perception of life's irony. life's brevty. he talked about mortality. he uses the word mortality in the great university speech, maybe his best speech ever and so one fact that historians have learned more about in the last 10 years thanks to the kennedy library is that he had a very difficult life long strugual health had. he had serious health problems and i think he knew that a 100th birthday was out of the question. so he would not have made it to his own 100th anniversary.

he knew life was short and precious and that feeling is in those speeches and that's one of the reasons we reread them. >> there's a certain authenticity that is a kind oflusive concept often. for me i thinking it meentz fundamentally taking things seriously and expanding empathy and i think that for many americans and again why he remains popular. he made his share of mistakes. there were ups and downs but there -- and i think this again helped explain those popularity. >> and i think we think about mistakes and authenticity. one of the things i really admire about him is that self reflective, willing to learn. if you just take the bay of pigs

which was an enormous challenge, mistake. between that and the cuban missile crisis so much happened. we didn't -- we all see pictures of the situation room. he started that between those two. the hotline to russia started then. the navy s.e.a.l., the green beret, the daily briefings. and so that self reflection of i, president kennedy, wasn't getting good information. i didn't make the best decision. how can i do better and how can our system do better? and that's such a refreshing element. >> i think we want presidents to change in office. we don't just want them to governor the way they campaigned. it's a very important part of the job to grow into the job. it's an impossible job and he really grew very effectively and i think without the bay of pigs,

a terrible mistake and it was a severe error gave him the confidence, gave him the irritation to rethink his system of governance as you mentioned. and so mistakes are crucial to growth and he grew beautifully in his thinking about the cold war and the cuban missile crisis allowed him to grow further into the nuclear test century. he grew a lot on civil rights, he grew lot just as a person who is open to the different ideas of a country that was extremely diverse and he was always listening and i think his second term would have been fascinating. >> what do each of you think are the top few accomplishments of the thousand days? picking a few. >> i think that his handling of

the cold war broadly speaking was an accomplishment. it seems to me there were things thap happened in the year following the cuban missile crisis that i think he has a great deal of responsibility for. kruschef helped. and that to me seems to grow out of a conviction john kennedy had, i think i'm finding in my research long before he became president which is geopolitical power was great. it was greater than any other nation including the soviet union but ultimately limited. he also had a sense a deep conviction that prospect of nuclear war, the prospect of -- let me put it this way. the prospect of superpower war in the nuclear age was an

impossibility and i think he acted with that in mind and basically his last year of life is very important in that regard. i guess i would also suggest that since he was lementally late in coming to the civil rights issue in a serious way. the day after the american university speech, i think i give him credit for making civil rights a moral issue and that was important in terms of what's going to happen later on and finally i think the space program and the commitment would be another example it seems to me of a success in his administration, even if the fruits of that effort wouldn't be seen until later. so those would be three. >> i agree exactry with those three but i would add also he projected a sense of self confidence that people in very

different walks of life picked up on and james meredith who integrated the university of mississippi was inspired by his inaugural address to do that david mccullough, the great historian, was inspired to start writing history. people who did very different things, i think we can trace a later in the '60s and in the '70s -- i wrote an essay. there's a book we are celebrating that came out by public figures about his significance at 100. i wrote an essay arguing that the immigration act that changed our country forever in 1965 can be linked to him and to his very strong interest in immigration. it was a lifelong interest. we will never be the same country and we will never go back in time no do i think we would want to a country that was

more uniform in color and more boring than the wonderful, diverse, multichromatic society that we inhabit today. even with all of our problems, we live in a very exciting society. i think he made it much more exciting than it had been. >> i think you also have to include on this list, don't you, the peace corps? i think what ted is speaking to is that an excitement about, infectious it turns out from the examples you have given in public service, and what public service can mean. and i worry a little bit that we've lost this. i think we have lost on some level our confidence in ourselves in a way as a society. it seems to me that as a success of this administration, john f. kennedy's administration was extolling public service and making people excited about it. >> clearly -- i agree with

everything you said in making people excited. one of the ways, the space program, and you can talk more about this in a minute, but listening to some of the tapes you worked on and reading the documents, our country knew so little about the technology back then. to put it in perspective, the freedom 7 capsule that went up has less than half of the computing power of a smartphone of anyone in the audience tonight. so when he says that we'll go to the rice university speech, that we're going to go to the moon, the reality is they weren't sure. so how do you have the confidence to rally a country? i know if he hadn't we couldn't have made that. there have been so many advantages. from the start of gps to dozens of technology advantages. but how did he have the instinct to do that and then rally people at every level? >> well, he had a lot of confidence in himself, that's for sure. he was highly accomplished even

before he thought he would be a politician. he had written his first book at a very young age. he followed achievement his entire -- he was interested in achievers. he was not afraid of ideas. i think that's one thing i honor about john f. kennedy is the confidence with which he walked across the stage of great thinking and great ideas. there was a pew poll in the last several days that showed how a big section of our country thinks it's now a bad thing to go to college. it's not a good thing. i don't want to get into partisanship at all. believe me. i live in washington. i don't want to go there. but i think whether you're republican -- i mean, william f. buckley jr. was a great champion of ideas on the right. i think john f. kennedy was a great champion of ideas where he lives. sometimes on the left. sometimes in the middle.

and the space program was an exciting idea and he got the whole country behind it. it was an exciting scientific idea. i wish we could think of something similar now. i think we have something and it is the fight to save our planet which is not so different from the space effort because it was those early photographs of the earth as a fragile blue marble in a dark universe that began to help people think we need to look after this place. it would be great to see a bipartisan global effort with science and ideas along similar lines. >> in fact we recently interviewed caroline kennedy and her three kids, so president kennedy's grandchildren, and asked them about their grandfather. and jack schlossberg, the only grandson of president kennedy

said basically that. he said if my grandfather were alive today, i bet he would have taken this big idea concept and directed it to the environment. today when -- whether it's a company or a country thinks of a really big idea, they call it a moon shot. >> right. >> exactly. >> literally, he brought us literally the first moon shot. >> that's right. >> and so having -- and there have been lots of great examples, including the distinguished public officials here who have continued that effort. but i think we need to do more of that. and set a goal that at the time seems unreachable as a way to rally the country. >> yeah. i completely agree. i was not aware his grandson articulated that. in those ways. but i agree completely and also with ted's observation on that. >> some of that, research spins off other research. so starting a moon shot is just always a good idea.

i think a lot of the early technology that led ultimately to the world wide web and the internet came out of thnasa. not exclusively. other parts of the military, the government, but the whole earth catalog of later in the '60s included that massive photograph of earth. and stewart brand and that group of people were very instrumental in developing the california version of the internet in the late '60s. so we don't claim that john f. kennedy gave us the internet, and he didn't. >> that was al gore, right? >> but moon shots lead to a lot of other planets out there. >> sure. >> and what about -- what about in terms of peace corps, not whether it's successful or not, but how much of a risk was it at the time? eisenhower called it the kiddie corps.

a lot of the countries we went to had recently broken free from colonial rule. do you think -- and there was a debate with administration about how big to make it initially. what do you think in terms of his political capital where to spend time? what do you think about that, fred? >> i don't know what ted thinks about this. i don't know that it required a great deal of political capital on his part. it had a certain cold war component. we should recognize. in other words, this was perceived by him and by others in the administration as a means of waging, if you will, the cold war. so it wasn't all about -- it wasn't all born out of idealistic motives, if you will. i think there was uncertainty in the administration about whether it would succeed and what kind of response you would get from americans. would young people from all over the country actually sign up for this thing? what would they find when they went out in the field? all of that i think was an unknown. but i think my sense from my research to this point is that he had a faith and advisers

around him had a faith that this was an idea that they should pursue, they should do it right away. it's one of the things that basically was decided upon in those first 100 days. and broadly speaking at least, the results speak for themselves i think. >> i think fred makes a great point when he says that there were cold war elements even to the soft power of the peace corp. he was trying to win over the hearts and minds of the world to use a phrase from that time. and i think even we love the celebration of art and poetry. and pablo casal is playing his cello. but there were cold war elements to all of that. there were very attractive positions. but the peace corps was an extraordinary idea, nothing like it had ever come through u.s.

foreign policy, which was a world largely of men, middle aged men, all from the same background wearing the same kind of suit. probably a suit a lot like the one i'm wearing in the middle of washington and in the summer. and he just made everything more exciting. and he opened it up to young people. they were doing foreign policy. a lot of very interesting people came out of the peace corp. i just did an event at the library of congress. i was in your role. i was just the welcomer. but the head of netflix is a peace corps alumnus. and incredibly -- elaine chao was involved with the peace corps earlier in her life. people from all different partisan backgrounds went into that and grew. i think there was an element of danger. it's not quite political danger exactly. i think there was actual danger to the young men and women who went to those countries. i think that we didn't exactly know that at the time. to send people out without any

protection and we saw that in some ways in our foreign policy with the attacks on our embassies in the last decade or so. there was a naivete about it at the beginning. still there was a wonderful idealism which justified itself. >> it's interesting, congressman kennedy, the son of the former congressman, the current congressman who is in the peace corps as you know in the dominican republic, recently spoke at the library. he tells a story he arrives in the dominican republic. he's on a rickety bus going to the town he is going to be stationed. and a gentleman comes up to him in spanish and says are you in the peace corps? he says how do you know that? and he says red hair, gringo, red hair. and he says oh, i get it. and the gentleman said i want to thank you. 30 years ago a peace corp volunteer came to my village and brought water and for 30 years we've had water. and i never had a chance to thank him. so i want to thank you.

so when you think about the ripples, literally the ripples of hope. and the other thing i've seen, there are about a quarter million people who have been in the peace corps. there are so many who have had distinguished careers, public, private, impacted their lives, whether it's more they impacted the country or the village, i don't know. but it's clearly an enormous impact. and the question is how do we -- can we continue to galvanize that in today's environment with vista and americorps. obviously there have so many great programs out there. >> one way we sometimes limit ourselves in the way we conduct foreign policy is we just think about our enemies or we think of the world in very simple categories. there were a lot of people and sometimes him who thought it was the blue part of the world against the red part of the world. it was cold war. i think the peace corps helped him. he was already on his way in many ways to see the world in its great complexity. he really thought a lot about latin america.

he started the alliance for progress very early. he thought a lot about africa, which not too many have done. he had a lot of visits from the brand new presidents of democratic african countries just coming out of european colonialism. he thought a lot about asia and the way it fit in or didn't always fit in to the cold war. and in his way, he was a real voice for people who didn't have a strong voice on the world stage. people from small countries. and i think we are a better country when we hear the voices from small countries. >> yeah, and it all speaks to -- you're both speaking to something i think is important. and i think ted may have referenced it earlier, soft power. my colleague joe nye basically coined that phrase. i think it has great power. great power. in that it explains a great deal it seems to me about why the united states and the west ultimately prevailed in the cold war. and the things we're talking

about now seems to me are excellent examples of that soft power. which is so to say not military power, not economic power. it is about american culture. it's the american way of life. it is american institutions, american ideals. it seems to me here and in various other way, john f. kennedy in a way personified this perhaps to a greater degree than we realized. again, i come back to my swedish relatives. way up in the northern part of sweden in lapland. there is this on the part of many this belief that this was a very special leader who was american, and we're going to look up to the united states. and on some level, maybe even emulate the united states. >> his daughter just returned as you know from ambassador in japan. and she said literally every single day she met people, japanese folks, many who were

born, you know, way after the administration, that said the same thing. so it is worldwide. there are so many other accomplishments. what are some of the either challenges maybe they didn't accomplish, or maybe some of the things the unfilled part of it. the bay of pigs. what are -- either that or anything else you want to address. i think it's important not that we idolize that. >> no, no. >> he wouldn't want that. >> in fact -- and that's i think a challenge for me as i write this book. i think that cuba -- you know, the cuban missile crisis as is often said, a shining moment for john f. kennedy. i have just gone through the tapes again, gone through the transcript, and i'm affirmed in that view. it's an extraordinary moment of leadership. and it's sort of cliche to say, but it's on some level quite true that we're all here today because -- arguably because of

the sagacity of the wisdom that he showed. i want to suggest that john f. kennedy bears some responsibility for the cuban missile crisis happening in the first place. that even after the bay of pigs, he authorized -- he supported an effort by his government, by the american government, to destabilize the cuban government to -- with the ultimate aim of overthrowing that government. that we know influencedd khrushchev's decision to put the missiles in cuba. so i think that the record there is mixed. vietnam, on which i have spent a good deal of time, i would say is again mixed. i mentioned earlier that it seems to me that on civil rights, the administration was very cautious for a good long while. so it's, again, sort of split in a sense, or not a particularly -- i wouldn't necessarily give it particularly high marks for the administration.

so there were challenges. and let's finally remember that the cold war in that first year of 1961, it's a very tense time. and i don't think john f. kennedy or anybody else in his administration knew precisely how that was going to turn out. >> that's a wonderful answer. i think we all want to hear from fred about vietnam, which is a tragedy that unfolds across about four presidential administrations. but, you know, some of it belongs inside the legacy of john f. kennedy, and that's, you know, a reckoning all historians have to come to terms with. you asked about challenges. i think -- i said earlier that we all feel today in 2017 that we live in a kind of fractured country. politics is really tough.

it's tough whether you're a democrat or a republican. neither party is very united, in fact. about the only thing they're united on is they really hate the other side. some of that goes back to that time. we mentioned watergate and vietnam as reasons americans lost faith in their government. i think the assassination was another reason that people's faith was just shattered in life itself. how could something that horrible have happened? i think in many ways we are still trying to come to terms with our serial disappointment since that high watermark of his presidency. had he lived, it's a pretty tall order to say he would have solved all of the problems of the 1960s. because so many were coming. and they came at everyone. they came at lyndon johnson, they came at richard nixon, and politics really wasn't up to the challenge of handling all of the problems of the 1960s. but had he lived, i think we

would have had a fighting chance. and we would have been a more united country in 1969, when he left office, than we actually were. and we've never quite gotten back to the idealism that we had during his presidency. so that's not his fault. but it's just a challenge that i link to his presidency that i think we all have to reckon with. >> sure. i think our world -- the combination of him and then the assassinations of reverend king and his brother bobby and many other leaders changed the way people think in different ways. let's go back to civil rights for a second. you were talking about it. and clearly, when he started, he was concerned about southern governors and the votes and that kind of thing. and then he changed. talk about, either one of you, or both of you, what you think triggered the change. because clearly by the end -- he did make civil rights a moral issue. and was very committed to it. what he and his brother as the

attorney general did with leadership. ask then, you know, when johnson came in a month after, he said as a -- that the testament to john kennedy, let's pass the civil rights bill. and really -- from a moral issue. so what do you think made that evolution? >> a specific answer is the children who were getting pushed around, later killed but in the spring of 1963 in birmingham, alabama, there was a moral outrage over the fact that children were being really tortured by an unfeeling southern society and a bad mayor and bad police commissioner in birmingham. but i think, again, it was growth. he was growing so fast. he had come and his enemies tried to paint him but he would as a wealthy elitist.

but he had come from a family of people who were outside of power in 19th century anglo-saxon boston, and a family with a lot of children in it. i think he just saw as his vision improved and his soul deepened, he saw these were people he wanted to be on their side. i think his brother was very important helping him get there. i think martin luther king was very important. the quality of leadership he provided in the spring of 1963, he writes the great letter from birmingham jail which is up there as a great theological -- not just a political statement, a great theological statement. and i think it was intensely moving to anyone with a conscience. he had one. >> yeah. there is a new book by steven livingston on the king-jfk relationship which i commend you, which has just come out. i think everything ted says is right. i think bobby's role in a sense

pushing his brother to do this matters. so i think you're right to credit bobby with a role in this. it does speak to something that i'm trying to ponder. which is it seems to me that jfk had a capacity for empathetic -- for empathy. for empathetic understanding. meaning he could put himself in the shoes of somebody else. i think it was very important in the resolution of the cuban missile crisis. i think on some level, as ted is suggesting, it also matters here. both of them i think had that capacity. i think that's part of it. >> i think that's a wonderful point. we don't often ask for empathy. we really ask for strength, charisma, the perfect sound bite. those are the things in the current political marketplace that win. but empathy is really valuable. i think deep down, we want that in our leaders. and i agree. he had it. >> excellent point.

talk more about your experience of listening to the tapes and which ones you chose. what did it teach you about john kennedy that you didn't know before? >> well, it was an incredible experience as a historian. i had a pretty deep immersion in his speeches already, because i had been a clinton speech writer, and that was our playbook, you know? whenever i was sitting there trying to come up with something original to say and failing, that happened a lot -- especially in these hot summer days in washington. i was often in the old executive office building, which had imperfect air conditioning, and just throwing a pencil at the ceiling. and we all would just start reading jfk's speeches to get inspiration. martin luther king, too. and robert kennedy, too. but to hear him talking is a different world you go into. and they had just been released, the audiotapes, right before the book came out in 2012, and it was an incredible experience to listen to them. and, you know, they're playing out in real-time, the cuban

missile crisis unfolds over two weeks in real-time. and almost all of it is caught in the tapes. so it's an incredible experience. and they shift around a lot during those two weeks. from -- it seems like it's about to happen that we're about to invade cuba, and then we don't. and then there are fears, russia might do something to us, and they don't. but there are also a lot of moments of humor and levity. hilarious, and sometimes on purpose and sometimes accidentally. one time i remember he caught a military operation -- a very innocent one, which they had built a $5,000 hospital suite annexed to a cape cod hospital in the expectation his wife would use it to give birth. and he was such a good politician that he went crazy, because he thought it would look like bad pr, that the kennedys were asking the military to build a special expensive wing.

and he screamed at the officer responsible and threatened to send him to alaska. it was just -- hearing him really let loose with his anger. and at the very end of that call, he hangs up and you hear a little chuckle. and you know it was kind of play-acting. there was also an amazing autobiographical moment where a tape that was not one of his tapes, but a journalist named james cannon, conducted a long interview with him in january 1960, just as he is deciding to run. he's going to go for it. and it's a dinner party. it's cannon and ben bradley and his then wife toni bradley and jack kennedy and jackie kennedy. and it is the most raw, first draft of history you could ever imagine listening to. it's just why do i want this? i want it, because that's the seat of the action. i'm tired of being one of 100 senators and eisenhower controls everything.

i want to control everything. and these are the ways i want our country to change. and you really hear in his voice, and basically in his solar plexus -- it's like coming out of him -- how much he wants america to change. and it's an incredible listening. >> you kind of feel like you're there, don't you? >> you do. >> you hear the glasses clinking. >> yes. >> i have a favorite tape, i think, of the tapes. or certainly one of my favorites. october 22nd, about a week into the cuban missile crisis. and i played this -- steven and i did an event together not too long ago at the kennedy library. and this is a conversation between president kennedy and former president eisenhower. and what you get in this tape, as well, on the 22nd, is this sense of humor, even he had this time of intense pressure. you get a sense of his deference to seniority, so he's very sort of deferential to

senator eisenhower. and then he finishes by saying, "hold on tight, general." and then there is this calm -- this is something that the tapes -- actually, to think about it now. i'm not sure i've thought about this before. but there is a calmness in these tapes that i think you want to have in a leader. and it certainly comes through in the missile crisis. that suggests, if i may use the hemingway line, a kind of grace under pressure. and if i think of the tapes in totality -- and, again, they make mistakes. we can talk about vietnam. but that calmness, that grace, comes through on the tapes. >> absolutely. >> yeah. >> that's great. so let's talk -- i want to encourage everyone in the audience -- there is going to be a chance for everyone in the audience to ask questions in a few minutes. so think about them, and we'll talk about that. but let's talk about vietnam. both based on, you know, his role and in the impossible question that a historian gets asked, if he had lived, what would have happened?

>> the mother of all counterfactual. >> exactly. >> so i think -- and i've grappled with this a lot. there is a paradox here. it's the most controversial part of his legacy, i would suggest. because of the timing of his death, which is november of '63, shortly after the south vietnamese leader diem has been overthrown in a coup that kennedy sanctioned, gave the green light for. and it's not long before the key decisions that lyndon johnson will have to make. and i submit, a surviving john f. kennedy would have had to make. i think he would have had to make those decisions roughly at the same time that johnson did. but there's a paradox, because kennedy, even when he goes to indochina in 1951 as a congressman, he's about to challenge henry cabot lodge for a seat in massachusetts. he wants to brush up on his

foreign policy credentials. so he and bobby and patricia, their sister, have a long, extended tour of asia, and they spend time in indochina. and even there, we know this from the diary that he kept -- astonishing piece of work -- and speeches that he gave in boston when he returned home, he already then in 1951 grasped not only that the french were likely to lose, but that any western power that tried to take on this vietnamese revolution is likely to lose as well. and i don't think that that skepticism ever goes away. so when he takes off for dallas on that last trip, i think he was still skeptical about any kind of military solution in vietnam. and yet -- here's the paradox -- on his watch, in those 1,000 days, you have a marked increase in the american involvement. i think partly for domestic political reasons, he felt vulnerable, as all democrats did in that era to charge us of softness on communism.

in part a natural politicians inclination, maybe human nature, to punt, to put off difficult decisions. let's just escalate a little bit more and see if we can perhaps turn things around. there is some of that, as well. so there is this paradox. in terms of the what-if, i'm suggesting in an essay that i've written for the book that accompanies the ken burns -- and i recommend, by the way, the ken burns series that's coming out in september. but there's a book that accompanies this, and i have an essay in it on this question of what he would have done. and i conclude in that essay that though we can never know, i think that the best answer is that a surviving john f. kennedy does not americanize the war in the way that lyndon johnson did. i think he opts ultimately for a kind of fig leaf political settlement. he always drew the line at ground troops.

and i don't think that would have changed. and that, of course, was key to johnson's escalation, was the ground troops. >> fascinating. fascinating. so i have more questions, but let's see for the audience -- there are microphones on either side. if you have questions, please go to them. i would encourage you to make sure it's a question, meaning it should end with a question mark, rather than a statement. and we'll start. and, again, i may jump in and ask some more questions. but let's start over here. [ inaudible question ] >> just speak up a little. >> okay. so don't you think making kennedy's presidency was more pragmatic and adaptive? he was sort of a supply side economist? he cut taxes, he did escalate the u.s. involvement in vietnam? and it was lyndon johnson that was more of the transformational president with the civil rights act and the great society. >> i think that's a fair question.

there is a larger legislative achievement under lyndon johnson. he's president for a longer time. he's the master arm-twister. he's very good at it. and he also has the great political advantage of he can talk a lot about the martyrdom of john f. kennedy. and i think that was a very effective political tool for lyndon johnson. john f. kennedy is working in a more difficult political world. and he's got southern senators who are democrats, but they're not very liberal. he's got a pretty mixed house and senate, and it was going to be tough to get huge legislation through, although he proposed civil rights, and a lot of what johnson got through, as i said, was based on what kennedy had said he wanted to get through. so i think the premise of your question is true. basic achievement in congress is

larger under johnson, but i think the achievement and inspiration is probably larger under kennedy. and i think it's fair to consider them partners in a way. it was the kennedy/johnson team that ran in 1960. and in my essays in this book, i really did say immigration, which is one of -- we often talk about the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 as the hallmark lbj achievement. but the immigration act of 1965 is huge. and changed our country forever in really positive ways. and i tried to argue that that was not just linked to jfk's memory. that jfk had been working on immigration from the time he ran for congress in 1946. >> yeah, and i would just say that in foreign policy, it seems to me that the transformational figure of the two of them is john f. kennedy. and as i suggested earlier, even

before he becomes president, if you go back and look at the speeches of the campaign, and then the speeches even early in this presidency -- for example, a speech in seattle in november of 1961. there are seeds there -- more than seeds. there are arguments about a fundamentally changed super power relationship. that i think were in a way cut short by the assassination. and johnson's problem in part was that he was not at all transformational on foreign policy. he was a cold warrior. and i think he believered on some level in the domino theory. he said in speeches if we don't fight them on the streets of vietnam, we'll be fighting them on the streets of san francisco. even though we also know that lyndon johnson had his own doubts and said, what the hell does vietnam matter to me? so, you know, they're both complex in this regard. but it seems to me on the foreign policy side, since you used the word "transformational," i would say it applies more to jfk. >> i think it's a fascinating

question of measure effectiveness. as both of you said, if you measure effectiveness by legislation, lyndon johnson, head and shoulders. he had a long list of very impressive things. if you go a little further, richard nixon got a lot of great legislation through. he probably isn't -- you know, people don't remember that as much. >> right. >> so it is the combination of the inspiration and the spirit. one of the other areas i would ask both of you and then we will get to the next question in the audience is, one of the things -- and i particularly want to cover this because of where we are -- john kennedy was known for his commitment to the arts. he and his wife both -- what they did in the white house and his belief in how it wasn't nice to have. it was part of society. and if you look at many of his speeches and talked about that, you know, from symbolic things like having robert frost at the inauguration to what they did in the white house and other things, are there other presidents that you think have

had the same level of commitment to the arts? in recent time? >> i'll let ted ponder that one, and i'll help him by giving -- by fleshing out your question, or suggesting that you're on to something very important, which is that john f. kennedy believed and said that something to the effect that unfettered access to the arts is a hallmark of a free society. or it's absolutely imperative to a free society. i think that matters. i don't know that he himself personally had deep interest in art or in music. jackie once said his -- the only song he likes is hail to the chief. but he could appreciate. he understood the importance of this, and i think that matters. but i don't know. are there other presidents that we would -- >> i think again lbj, we don't think of him as the guy giving the speech with robert frost sitting there, but the neh came

into existence and the nea under johnson. and that links to the memory of johnson. it was achieved in 1965. it is a very important institution. i'm going to knock on wood. it's always in the budget to be removed and has always survived. i'm so glad it has. we tried in the clinton times. we certainly had a lot of arts events previous to the 1960s. there was hardly a few paintings and embassies, and that was about it. there were great writers of history. including woodrow wilson and theodor roosevelt. john quincy adams, to go way back. we began this with anniversaries. i got an e-mail saying we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of his birth this year. now that's probably not going to lead to a lot of celebrations in washington. >> i'm going to one later tonight.

but he helped to conceive of the smithsonian institution, and he wanted there to be a national observatory. george washington wanted there to be a national university. so in different ways, other presidents have sketched it out. >> great. >> and it's also worth saying, i guess, maybe we already did, but that jackie is hugely important on this particular issue. >> yes. >> absolutely. she deserves enormous credit. the arts overall. also for the restoration of the white house. >> yes. >> so much more. yes, sir. >> hello. thank you. >> yes. >> you present the sequential aspects of kennedy and lbj. how much influence did lbj have on kennedy while kennedy was alive? >> go ahead. no, please. >> i think very little. >> okay. >> i think those were three of the worst years of lyndon johnson's life. [ laughter ] and robert karo says as much in

his masterful series of biographies of johnson. their relationship was really complicated, even by washington standards. and i've been reading "the road to camelot," a very good new book by curtis wilke and tom olyphant. it begins in 1956 the patriarch, john f. kennedy's father, joseph kennedy urging lyndon johnson to start running for president. he promises i will finance your campaign even four years before the race on the condition that you accept my son as your vice presidential nominee. the twists and turns, including with robert kennedy, are incredible in that relationship. >> well, and the same book, and others have done this too. but then the drama of the selection of lyndon johnson. >> right. it's incredible. >> is, you know, worthy of a big book by itself. but at that convention in 1960, and the disagreements between

jack and robert about, you know, how to do it, what do we actually want lyndon to say, what do we expect him to say? it's extraordinary. i suppose one could argue, and robert kennedy said this in later years. that the selection of johnson was, in fact, crucial. that the success in the south was dependent upon having lbj on the ticket. others have suggested that if you have symington on the ticket, you can pick up some other states that they didn't get. and so maybe johnson wasn't crucial. but in terms of the relationship in office, very fraught, as you say. >> fascinating. yes, sir? >> we began with all of john f. kennedy's words. and arguably, one of the reasons he is in our hearts is that he did speak these phenomenal words, which are very, very memorable. and one of the contrasts, certainly, with barack obama, is it's very hard to remember lots

and lots of phrases from barack obama. so i ask you, how much of the great legacy of kennedy and the positive glow is really ted sorensen and the other speech writers who were behind those masterful words? >> it's a really good question. sorenson is crucial. there's no question about it. you know, the -- think about this image. 1957. he's already running for president. it's not announced, but the politicos know. and what it is, i think he gave 140 speeches all over the country in 1957. and very often, it's two people flying into some small place, speaking before an audience of 12, and it's john f. kennedy, ted sorensen. and so sorenson is there, and, again, oliphant and wilke bring

this out powerfully. the only thing i would add, is -- and this is something i'll talk about in my biography, is that john f. kennedy has a bigger hand in these speeches than i anticipated when i started my research. which is to say, you can see his distinctive scribbles on many of these speeches. it's also the case, and i think the library -- the library brings this out. that he quite often departed from his text. for fairly long stretches. and they're still -- you know, he still speaks in full paragraphs. but those are john f. kennedy's own words. so i think it's more of a partnership than maybe i anticipated when i started because i thought this was sorenson, to some extent dick goodwin. schlessinger has a role in some speeches but i think kennedy was more involved. >> i got to do a couple events with ted sorensen when he was alive at the jfk library, and it was such an honor, because he

was a kind of hero. and we all thought we might emerge as the next ted sorensen. i even have the right first name. and it didn't happen. and it hasn't happened for anyone since then. i mean, there was something really special about that friendship. i do think it's important for a speech writer to give the principle the credit. i mean, you know their language. and you write it with their thoughts in your mind. it's not like you are exactly the author. you're writing for a very specific person and a very specific cause. and ted sorensen once or twice had a little trouble with that concept. but he basically had a life of unstinting loyalty to john f. kennedy and wrote very important books about him. i always valued personally there were ways he didn't really fit in. he's this sort of odd liberal unitarian from nebraska. in a group of tough irish

american pols from boston. kenny o'donnell , larry o'brien. and jfk loved those guys. and you don't hear their names as often. and they were really important to him. but i think ted sorensen created a nice balance in that mix of the idealist. i think he was probably driving very hard for that civil rights speech. i think he really heard the martin luther king theological language of civil rights. it's something very important. and jfk wanted him there for a reason. he had the tough irish pol thing all sewed up. but he needed a different element, and that's what made it so successful. >> it's interesting in that they didn't socialize as much. i think it was a very close working relationship. like you suggest, of a type we haven't seen very often. but, you know, it didn't really go -- maybe because, as you you said, they're very different people. >> i think ted sorensen went home at night. >> right. ted sorensen deserves enormous, enormous credit.

but i encourage you if any of you come to boston if you go in the library on the wall there are speeches with his marks on them. including, for example, the last major speech he gave in massachusetts was at amherst college, and curtis mentioned earlier in october of 1963, when he dedicated the robert frost library there. and talked about the importance of arts. and we have john f. kennedy's speech there. you'll see the marks on there. very much was a partnership. there were some that were very extemporaneous. some that were very notable. you may have heard in berlin, i can bin berliner speech. but while ted sorensen had written a speech, john kennedy arrives in berlin, and was so moved by the crowd, and so -- and in a positive way, and so moved by the wall, and that he actually threw out the speech. so the only thing he had written down for that speech was the

eich bin berliner phrase. everything else was extemporaneous. so ted sorensen deserves a lot of credit. but john kennedy was brilliant in figuring out the connections. >> a great spontaneous moment of humor. >> yes. >> yes. humor was one of his many many elements he was great at. yes? >> excuse me. first i want to thank you for this lecture. it has been wonderful. my son was in the peace corps and the dominican republic. i know as a latina how much president kennedy was loved in the kennedy -- in the latino community. i recently saw dolores huerta

with her, you know, her -- the screening of her movie. and she talks about what an impact kennedy -- president kennedy and robert kennedy had with the latinos. because there were pictures, you know, and homes. and entering the farm workers boycott. so i just wondered if there is any research or -- did you come across how the impact of latinos had with president kennedy? >> i haven't done any on that topic. although i'm glad you mentioned dolores huerta. who is a great hero of our history. i think for her the real friendship was with her brother, with robert kennedy, who worked a lot with mexican migrant

workers in 1968 and cesar chavez and dolores huerta. and you really got to know them in a very profound way that went beyond just politics. but again, there was a kind of theological dimension to it, going to mass together. and robert kennedy identified a lot with sort of the liberal part of the catholic social justice movement. so there was something really important in that. and the alliance for progress was clearly a major initiative. it's announced at the beginning of the kennedy administration. i think it's a great topic for more research. they also have their biggest headache is in latin america too. so it's a pretty rich thing to go into. >> we could have more scholarship on this. but no, i agree completely. thank you. >> great. thank you for the question. yes, sir. >> so president kennedy was not perfect in many shapes and forms. but specifically, i would like

to ask about his health. and including other -- maybe flaws or imperfections he had. do you think that that helped or hindered him as a leader? and maybe you could say a few words about how other leaders of our time can use those kind of experiences to help them lead our country. >> that's a very good question. i do think that the health issue is an important one. his brother said that -- you know, my brother, meaning president kennedy, you know, has been in pain almost every day of his life. i think that is going to shape anybody, and it certainly shaped him. gave him arguably a certain fatalism. a sense, as i think we were discussing earlier, that he wasn't going to live all that long. i need to treasure each day, as we say, and live each day, as he said, more than once, as though it's going to be your last.

the only thing i would say is it may be possible to exaggerate. its effect on him as a politician and as a political candidate. because it strikes me that in 1946 when he runs for congress and is not feeling well, he's come back from the war. some of his ailments haven't been properly diagnosed yet, but he has them. he still gets up at the crack of dawn in the 11th district in massachusetts, goes up those triple deckers. if you know the triple deckers. up and down, up and down, day after day after day. when he runs for the senate, he is all over the state of massachusetts. in fact, a secret of his in all of his campaigns is he starts earlier and works harder. so somehow, even with these ailments, and maybe somehow they're even connected, but he is intensely driven to overcome

them. but there's a lot more to your question. >> that was news. it began to come out about around the year 2000. >> and bob dahlak deals with this in his book. >> right. it's always surprising to learn of a major new fact about someone you think you know historically. and it was especially surprising because he just seems so vigorous, to use a word he loved. vigor. and he's always moving, looking good, not wearing a hat. there's that famous photo of him in his swimming trunks. no president had ever done that. photographed on a beach in california. and he is behind the physical fitness test, which i sat at a recent event with fred. my decision to become a historian stemmed from the fact i could only do one pullup. [ laughter ]

i was horribly ostracized. >> so kennedy influenced you too. >> actually, my parents met as volunteers in 1960s. they were college kids here in washington. they met, and so i -- very direct impact on my life. but i think a couple specific things. i think we don't know, but there's a very plausible argument that he ran in 1960. everyone knew he was too young. he irritated everyone in his own party, as well as on the other side. and i think he felt like he had to do it in 1960, because he might not have any other chance. he might get too sick. so i think that's a fact of his life that might be attributable to his health, that he was just going for it as a young man. then i remember reading the book and there's this incredible realization near the end. most of us have seen these it zapruder film. and there's a terrible moment

where he's unable to duck. and it's because he was wearing a very rigid back brace because his back pain was so intense. you just know that as soon as you see the film with that knowledge that he's wearing a back brace he actually can't even duck because this brace is is so strong on him. so i think beginning of his presidency may have come from his health matters and the end of it also did. >> we have time for one final question. miss? >> my name is deirdra sullivan and my great uncle is a gentleman of the name of leo racine. i don't know if you recognize the name, but he was part of kennedy enterprises and basically wrote all the checks for nene in 1960. i was wondering if you can talk about that campaign and what that was like running as b irish catholic in 1960 and talk about the campaign in west virginia, and that was 98% protestant, and how that would then end the catholic question. >> well, he determined and his

aides determined that he had to enter the primaries, or at least the good number of them. of course, today we take this for granted. but it was a very different proposition in 1960. that was connected, in part, to his youth, as ted suggested. it was also suggested a function of his catholicism. and it's really fascinating. again, i think we keep plugging oliphant and wilke, which i reviewed very favorably. i think it's a terrific book. but they're quite good on this, not the least with respect to west virginia. the campaign gamble that they took and that they could best humphrey, who had his own issues. but it's one of those remarkable moments in a whole slew of them in this campaign that speak to the importance of organization, to the importance of financing.

i do think sometimes we -- my sense is that he was the favorite, however, on the democratic party side. sometimes we make a mistake in saying how did this guy sail into that convention in los angeles and win this thing. i think if you go back and look at the news coverage, he was because of his campaigning in '57, '58 and '59, the odds were with him more than with any of the others. lbj dithered, he took too long. symington wasn't going to be the one. humphrey. but there's no question that west virginia was incredibly dramatic. >> did you learn anything? >> his irishness was a wonderful part of the story. in many ways he was the least likely irish american politician anyone could -- i mean there was a kind of irish-american politician. everyone knew what they were like. it was a guy who was sort of older with a reddish face and

was like waving his arms all over the place and came out of urban ward politics from a big city. he was from a big city, but he was very different. >> his grandfather on his mother's side. >> right. al smith was that kind of a politician. but in some ways this irish-american was the preppiest politician we've ever seen. that's one of the many ways in which he challenged all of our known categories. in some ways, very european. he spent significant time in europe and in asia. he was living in london as london was going to war in the mid- to late '30s. >> he was right there, yeah. >> so he challenges almost all of our assumptions. so yes, being irish was incredibly important. the opposition to that was real

and hard for him to overcome. but he did it with the power of his language and that great speech in houston. i think each of these victories strengthened him and opened up who he was to more growth. so it was just one of the many things inside him that was deep then and still seems deep. >> i think that's just very quickly that what ted mentioned is really important. that desire he had to look to the wider world, which is, again, something we see in him even as a younger man. and it's going to be i think maybe a theme in my biography, is really important. this international sensibility that he develops and he maintains, obviously, as president. because what he cares most about is foreign policy. the other thing i would just say is it's interesting to speculate whether the catholic issue help him or hurt him. did the fact that he was catholic in 1960 cost him more votes than it gained him?

i think historians disagree about this. i would say it's probably in the end maybe a wash. helped him in some states and hurt him in others. but probably maybe comes out even. >> so john kennedy, we all know so much about him. tonight we've literally just scratched the surface. we could spend so much more time. i want you to first thank the smithsonian again and stephanie for hosting this. we really appreciate it. [ applause ] and join me to thank ted and fred for all they have done. and there are so many other books. theirious can look at. i also encourage you to look a great book written in 1958. it's written -- it's called "a nation of immigrants" by a then young senator named john kennedy. and its 60th anniversary will be next year and his words of immigration then as ted talked about in the '65 legislation are just as relevant, maybe even more so today. thank you all for being here.

thank you. [ applause ] our look at the life and legacy of president john f. kennedy will continue in just a moment. american history tv is in prime time all week, every week for the rest of the year. next time, we look at the american west and cowboy culture. join us at 8:00 p.m. eastern. this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, american university professor aaron bell talks about privacy laws and federal surveillance of civil rights leaders. >> here is the head of the cointel operations william

sullivan shortly after the march on washington and right in martin luther king's famous i have a dream speech. we must mark king now if not before as the most dangerous negro in the future of this nation from the standpoint of communism, the negro and national security. >> sunday at 4:30 p.m. eastern, former members of congress and vietnam war veterans reflect on lessons learned and ignored during the war. >> we learned the limits of military power during the vietnam war. we learned that as a society, as a culture that you can't kill an idea with a bullet. >> american history tv this weekend only on c-span3. you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programing on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter @c-span history for information on our schedule.

and to keep up with the latest history news. our c-span cities tour takes american history tv on the road to feature the history of cities across america. on our recent visit to portland historical society museum for a tour of their exhibit. high hopes. the journey of john f. kennedy. 2017 is the john f. kennedy sen ten yell. may 19, 1917. this exhibit is called high hopes. the journey of john f. kennedy. the end of president kennedy's life. the tragic end. everybody knows how his life ends. we want to get that out of the way first. we begin with a big tv screen. that shows the soap opera that was running on that day in november on tv and as you walk by the tv it